- Israel widens focus of war to include Lebanon front
- 'I am a rapist,' says Frenchman in mass rape trial
- Myanmar villagers battle to save rice crop as flood death toll jumps to 226
- Trump returns to campaign trail after weekend assassination scare
- Indian state reopens schools, restores internet after ethnic clashes
- Young Equatorial Guineans yearn for the American dream
- Man City brace for Inter reunion as Akanji fears 'tough' schedule
- Uganda's 'singing fools' use satire to attack government
- Champions League finalists Dortmund ambitious after 'alpha' rebuild
- Coal phase-out fuels far right in rural eastern Germany
- More than 95,000 Japanese aged over 100, most of them women
- 'Crushed and downtrodden': Azerbaijan's COP29 crackdown
- Meta bans Russian state media outlets for 'interference'
- Von der Leyen set to reveal EU's new top line-up
- Climate finance: what you need to know ahead of COP29
- Azerbaijan says 'God-given' oil and gas will help it go green
- Most Asian markets up ahead of Fed but Tokyo hit by strong yen
- Chinese appliance maker Midea soars in Hong Kong after US$4 bn IPO
- Japanese players in vogue as English clubs widen horizons
- Sean 'Diddy' Combs arrested amid lawsuits
- Buoyant Bangladesh seek more history in India Test series
- Boeing, union to resume talks as strike quiets Seattle plants
- UN General Assembly to debate call for end to Israeli occupation
- 'Virus hunters' track threats to head off next pandemic
- Firefighters battling flames around Brazil's capital
- Myanmar flooding death toll jumps to 226
- Peruvian police seize 1.3 tons of shark fins
- Town at center of US migrant conspiracies hit with 33 bomb threats
- Emmy ratings pick up with historic 'Shogun' wins
- Washington, Madrid, Prague seek information on nationals held in Venezuela
- Pakistani pleads not guilty in alleged Iran plot to kill US official
- Drug-resistant superbugs projected to kill 39 million by 2050
- London Fashion Week: Burberry gives the trench coat a streetwear edge
- US woman died after abortion ban delayed her medical care: report
- Chiles' attorneys file Swiss appeal to overturn Olympic medal agony
- Intel delays Germany, Poland chip factories for two years
- Brady's Birmingham beat Reynolds' Wrexham in 'Hollywood derby'
- UN chief condemns 'collective punishment' of Palestinians
- Chiefs running back Pacheco suffers leg fracture: team
- Ronaldo misses Al Nassr draw in Asian Champions League opener
- Murdoch media empire succession drama plays out in US tribunal
- Players ignored in loaded football season, says Liverpool's Alisson
- Philippines says disputed reef 'not lost' to China despite pullout
- England's Curry 'curled up and cried' after serious injury
- Glamorgan approach Hollywood's Reynolds and McElhenney over Hundred investment
- League Cup still 'significant' for Man Utd boss Ten Hag
- Brazil's farmers fret over fires and drought
- Top Biden aide says US economy at 'turning point'
- US military says withdrawal from Niger is complete
- Bayern set sights on dream home Champions League final
Tariq Ramadan, disgraced former star of European Islam
Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, convicted on appeal of rape and sexual coercion by a Geneva court, is a Swiss intellectual accused of masking violence and radicalism behind a mild facade.
Ramadan, 62, is the grandson of the founder of the Islamist movement the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and wrote his doctoral thesis on his ancestor.
He basked in the public spotlight in the 2000s as a professor at Britain's prestigious Oxford university, lecturing across Europe as well as Morocco, Qatar and Japan, drawing crowds of students wherever he went.
Named by Time Magazine in 2004 among the 100 most influential people in the world for his influence on European Muslims, Ramadan has nevertheless stirred controversy throughout his career.
He has rejected allegations of anti-Semitism as attempts to silence what he sees as legitimate criticism of the Israeli state.
And French defenders of the country's fierce secularism have accused him of smuggling an identitarian subtext within his modernising message, encouraging young girls to wear the Islamic headscarf or spreading religious fundamentalism.
Well turned-out with trademark trimmed grey hair and beard, Ramadan engaged in verbal jousts with opponents including French polemicist Eric Zemmour, who went on to stand as a far-right presidential candidate in 2022.
He fought back against allegations of fundamentalism, saying he encouraged young Muslims to involve themselves in their societies, calling the headscarf a matter of personal choice, urging "contextualisation" of Islam's founding texts and condemning violence.
Nevertheless, his attempt to acquire French nationality in addition to his Swiss passport to "provide a concrete, positive example of upholding the values of the Republic" was rejected in 2016 by the then prime minister Manuel Valls.
- Court battles in France -
Ramadan's fall from grace began in 2017, when he was first targeted with allegations of sexual violence in France.
In total, four women in France ultimately accused him of rapes between 2009 and 2016, while a Swiss woman converted to Islam filed a criminal complaint in 2018 for a rape she said took place in Geneva 10 years before.
The Swiss case is the one in which Ramadan has now been convicted on appeal.
As the allegations broke, he put his 12-year professorship in contemporary Islamic studies at the University of Oxford on hold as support for him haemorrhaged, including from Qatar.
His 2018 admission that he had sex outside his decades of marriage, in which he had four children with a French woman convert, tarnished his image for some religious and community leaders.
Saying he suffers from multiple sclerosis and depression, Ramadan retired early.
Alongside the Swiss case, a Paris appeals court ruled in June this year that Ramadan should be tried for raping three women between 2009 and 2016, a decision his lawyers have challenged.
The scholar spent more than nine months in pre-trial detention in 2018, but was released in November that year.
- 'Fragile' women -
French investigators in 2023 said they had identified a pattern across all the rape allegations.
Ramadan would enter private conversations with women who were "especially fragile, with tumultuous life stories, looking for love, validation and spirituality".
The discussions would quickly take an intimate and then sexual turn, prosecutors said, leading to an in-person meeting.
Psychiatric experts told the investigation that the women had been fervent admirers of Ramadan as a public figure with religious and academic credentials.
But when it came to the meetings, several women described a complete change of character, with Ramadan becoming violent, ranging from slaps to blows and non-consensual penetration.
Ramadan said he had not carried out "a single act, behaviour or sex act that was not discussed beforehand" with the women.
V.F.Barreira--PC